YE Mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze!
Your glorious standard launch again
To match another foe!
And sweep through the deep,
When the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The spirits of your fathers
Shall start from every wave!-
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And Ocean was their grave:
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell,
Your manly heart shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow;
While the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain-waves,
Her home is on the deep.
With thunders from her native oak,
She quells the floods below,
As they roar on the shore,
When the stormy winds do blow;
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn;
Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
Then, then, ye ocean warriors!
Our song and feast shall flow
To the fame of your name,
When the storm has ceased to blow;
When the fiery fight is heard no more,
And the storm has ceased to blow.
DRINKING SONG OF MUNICH.
SWEET Iser! were thy sunny realm
And flowery gardens mine,
Thy waters I would shade with elm
To prop the tender vine;
My golden flagons I would fill
With rosy draughts from every hill;
And under every myrtle bower,
My gay companions should prolong
The laugh, the revel, and the song,
To many an idle hour.
Like rivers crimsoned with the beam
Of yonder planet bright,
Our balmy cups should ever stream
Profusion of delight;
No care should touch the mellow heart,
And sad or sober none depart;
For wine can triumph over woe,
And Love and Bacchus, brother powers,
Could build in Iser's sunny bowers
A paradise below.
'TWAS one of those ambrosial eves
A day of storm so often leaves,
At its calm setting-when the West
Opens her golden bowers of rest,
And a moist radiance from the skies
Shoots trembling down as from the eyes
Of some meek penitent, whose last
Bright hours atone for dark ones past,
And whose sweet tears, o'er wrong forgiven,
Shine as they fall, with light from Heaven!
'Twas stillness all-the winds that late
Had rushed through Kerman's almond groves,
And shaken from her bowers of date
The cooling feast the traveller loves,
Now, lulled to languor, scarcely curl
The green sea wave, whose waters gleam
Limpid, as if her mines of pearl
Were melted all to form the stream:
And her fair islets, small and bright,
With their green shores reflected there,
Look like those Peri isles of light,
That hang by spell-work in the air.
THERE'S a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright,
Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer-day's light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour.
This was not the beauty-oh, nothing like this,
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss!
But that loveliness, ever in motion, which plays
Like the light upon autumn's soft shadowy days,
Now here and now there, giving warmth as it flies
From the lip to the cheek, from the cheek to the eyes;
Now melting in mist and now breaking in gleams,
Like the glimpses a saint hath of Heaven in his dreams.
When pensive, it seemed as if that very grace,
That charm of all others, was born with her face!
And when angry,-for even in the tranquillest climes
Light breezes will ruffle the blossoms sometimes-
The short, passing anger but seemed to awaken
New beauty, like flowers that are sweetest when shaken.
If tenderness touched her, the dark of her eye
At once took a darker, a heavenlier dye,
From the depth of whose shadow, like holy revealings
From innermost shrines, came the light of her feelings.
Then her mirth-oh! 'twas sportive as ever took wing
From the heart with a burst, like the wild-bird in spring;
Illumed by a wit that would fascinate sages,
Yet playful as Peris just loosed from their cages.
While her laugh, full of life, without any control.
But the sweet one of gracefulness, rung from her soul;
And where it most sparkled no glance could discover,
In lip, check, or eyes, for she brightened all over,-
Like any fair lake that the breeze is upon,
When it breaks into dimples and laughs in the sun.
Such, such were the peerless enchantments, that gave
Nourmahal the proud Lord of the East for her slave:
And though bright was his Haram,-a living parterre
Of the flowers of this planet-though treasures were there,
For which Soliman's self might have given all the store
That the navy from Ophir e'er winged to his shore,
Yet dim before her were the smiles of them all,
And the Light of his Haram was young Nourmahal!
AND DOTH NOT A MEETING LIKE THIS MAKE AMENDS.
AND doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I've been wandering awayTo see thus around me my youth's early friends, As smiling and kind as in that happy day? Though haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine, The snow-fall of time may be stealing--what then? Like Alps in the sunset, thus lighted by wine, We'll wear the gay tinge of youth's roses again.
|